Homecoming memory: Reconnecting with ISU

Tuesday

I have been associated with Iowa State now for almost a half a century so I've had a chance to watch Iowa State grow and develop over those years.

I have been associated with Iowa State now for almost a half a century so I’ve had a chance to watch Iowa State grow and develop over those years.

I think homecoming is important like many events. I think it reconnects alumni and friends with the university. They come back, the events that go on are important … it reconnects people with the institution.

Probably the most memorable homecoming event was when I was an undergraduate student. I have an undergraduate engineering degree from Iowa State, and it would have been in the late 1950s when we were building homecoming displays. That was a period of time when those were pretty big productions.

I was in a fraternity and we built a very large homecoming display, and as I recall, we won one of those awards. One of the downsides of that was my wife, Beverly, and I were dating at that point in time, and I’d stayed up all night doing all of this and was going to take a nap before we went out to a dance that evening. I fell asleep up in a sleeping dorm, which fraternities had then, and never woke up. I had a very unhappy spouse in the later years about never showing up for that dance date because I’d been working so hard building that float and fell asleep. It’s those kind of experiences I tend to remember.

— Warren Madden, senior vice president of business and finance at Iowa State University

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